“and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.”Luke 8:2-3 ESV
Reflection: what is the current return on investment you get on your investments?
If you have any investment, whether it is in property, stock market, metals, or simply money in a bank account, they all seem a bit unstable these days. Even government pension funds are in jeopardy of “running out” in many countries. And if we look at what is being presented to us as the “big picture” across the world, with wars, disease, crazy weather, fires and floods, and government spending run amok, it is understandable that also investors and investments are impacted. Unstable.
But I’m wondering, is this anything new? If you go back in history, isn’t it the same, underlying story that has played out time and time again? About greed and opportunists, who seek to gain more power, more wealth?
Today we are presented with a group of very wise investors, some of them very wealthy. Luke writes about many women who used their own wealth, their time and energy to help Jesus and the twelve disciples. And it is remarkable, when you stop and think about this. For the wealthy among them, living a plush lifestyle, could have easily “given some money to the cause”, and just continued living their lives. Perhaps gone and listened to Jesus teach from time to time.
Instead, it says they followed and helped, meaning walking by foot from town to town. Sleeping outside, in the fields or along the road. Helping to take care of everyone, most likely preparing meals and so on. What a change from their plush lives, which by the way, they could have returned to anytime. Humbling. But they chose to invest in this, to use their own money, to help, to walk with them.
And then Luke describes some of the women that followed “had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities”, and he mentions Mary Magdalene. We know quite a bit about her, as she is mentioned elsewhere. Perhaps she was the woman who we read about yesterday, coming into the dinner party, pouring her love out in public over Jesus. Mary was “known” in the area, not for her wealth and lavish lifestyle. And we need to recognize how difficult it must have been for her to show up where people knew her from the past. Humbling, no doubt.
And yet we see Mary putting her past aside, behind her, and instead placing her bet on the future, on following Jesus. To put her time, energy into helping and following. We don’t hear much about the logistics of living “on the road”, traveling from town to town with a group of perhaps 20-30 people. No small feat to keep everyone fed, take care of clothing, injuries, and so on. We see later what special place these women had with Jesus, as they were the first to see him as the risen Christ. They got to bring the message to the others, exactly as the Lord had planned.
Wise investments.
We need to learn some lessons from these women. Perhaps worry less about worldly return on investments. What they clearly saw in Jesus made them fundamentally change their lives, even drop what they were doing. They invested their time, their talents and energy, and their wealth into furthering the kingdom of God. It was clearly tough, very humbling no doubt, but what amazing returns they saw on their investments!!